Proxy voting is one of the most structured and observable ways institutional shareholders exercise governance rights. Yet the operational cost of applying voting policies consistently across thousands of ballot items remains high.

As Professor Lucian Bebchuk and others have emphasized, institutional ownership concentrates shareholder power in intermediaries. Voting authority is exercised through layered delegation: beneficiaries to asset owners, asset owners to asset managers, and managers to internal stewardship teams and (often) external research providers. Concentration does not eliminate agency costs; it relocates them. The practical costs of implementing and monitoring voting policy therefore shape whether shareholder power is exercised effectively.

At Proxywise AI, we are building a policy-first proxy voting and governance analysis system designed to make proxy voting more transparent, consistent, and auditable. This post highlights the core design choices behind the system and what we are learning from two early-stage pilots in proxy season 2026 – one with an asset owner and one with a large asset manager – running in parallel against existing workflows for testing and validation.

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